Caterpillars rest on a leaf during a Monarch butterfly workshop for
teachers at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto on Wednesday. The
workshop helps teachers incorporate information about the
butterflies into the classroom. COLIN
MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

Nine-year-old Anthony Lee gets up close and personal with a monarch
butterfly before it takes off Wednesday at Black Creek Pioneer
Village. COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

Anthony, 9, and Alana Lee, 6, check out a pair of monarch
butterflies on Wednesday. The butterflies were part of a workshop
for teachers at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto aimed at
helping them incorporate information about the insects in their
teaching material.COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

Monarch butterflies gather on a piece of netting during a workshop
for teachers at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto on Wednesday.
(AUG. 11, 2010)
COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

A bug’s life can inspire a kid-friendly movie, but as dozens
of educators found out this week, it can also teach children about geography,
foreign cultures and ecology.

About 30 gathered Wednesday at the Black Creek Pioneer Village
for a two-day Monarch Teacher Network workshop. Hosted by the Toronto and
Region Conservation Authority and the New Jersey-based Educational Information
and Resource Center, the workshop provides teachers and environmental educators
with a range of monarch butterfly-themed materials to incorporate into their
curricula.

Erik Mollenhauer, director of the Monarch Teacher Network,
said the monarch is exciting to teach because “it has a great story.”

“You have this little insect that weighs less than a dime and
yet it makes a journey about 3,500 kilometres to Mexico,” he said. “When
(the students) release that butterfly (after raising it), it’s not just a
butterfly that goes to Mexico, the imagination of that child also goes with it.”

This imagination, he added, will lead the children to wonder
about what the butterflies will see when they set out from Canada to Mexico in
order to escape the harsh winter. This will allow teachers to integrate an
“interdisciplinary approach” in the classroom that involves geography, history
and language.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, maybe it takes a
butterfly to bring the village together,” Mollenhauer said. “We’re putting
together the village and the village is (the) different organizations like TRCA
and EIRC and thousands of teachers.”

The Monarch Teacher Network has trained about 4,000 educators
in North America since its creation in 2001 with the help of volunteers who are
passionate about conservation issues surrounding the monarch, which are being
threatened by habitat loss due to the destruction of milkweed fields in North
America to make way for urban development.

In an effort to track and conserve the butterflies’ habitats
along their migration route to Mexico, workshop participants will be tagging
monarchs with small stickers featuring six character codes. People who
look out for these codes can report them to Monarch Watch, a program based at
the University of Kansas, in order to find out the postal code where they were
released and then map out where they have been.

The series of workshops, funded by the W. Garfield Weston
Foundation, are being held this summer in the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Nova
Scotia and Manitoba.

Outside the Pioneer Village, a few monarchs were released to
the great delight of two youngsters, who squinted and squealed while Mollenhauer
placed the butterflies on their noses, dotted with sugar water.

“It’s buggin’ me!” said Anthony Lee, 9, tickled by the
insect’s wings as it warmed up for takeoff.

Mollenhauer said the butterflies are chilled for up to 30
minutes before their release to create this “magical” moment during which they
rest on people’s arms, shoulders or faces prior to fluttering away into the
wild.